Chapter 8
They had taken shelter in the cave they had briefly stayed in after the battle with the white butterfly. Next to Arin, who was bleeding, Yello let out a whimper like a puppy.
“It’s okay, I can bear it.”
“Grr… Grr…”
Though she said she was fine, Arin’s eyes were brimming with tears as she tried to soothe Yello.
“If it weren’t for you, I would’ve died. Compared to dying, this is nothing… really.”
Cold sweat dripped down her face from the pain in her torn calf. She desperately wanted to treat it right away, but the shoulder strap Yello had been holding in his mouth while fleeing had torn, rendering her backpack unusable. It had entered the system’s repair phase.
[System: Survival Backpack]
Status: The shoulder strap is torn. Backpack is currently unusable.
Cooldown for repair: 23 hours
It had probably been an hour since their frantic escape. The cooldown timer showed 23 hours remaining.
Arin, her vision blurry, wrapped her leg tightly in a blanket to stop the bleeding. Tightly binding it seemed to help dull the pain a little.
Suppressing the sigh rising in her throat, she tried to calmly assess the situation. Though she felt everything was going off track, the only way she could survive was by relying on the original story. Fragments of information scrambled through her mind.
Thanks to having activated her brain with a daily dose of trail mix, a clever idea suddenly popped into her head.
“Yello, I think we have to go to the troll territory.”
In the forest on the northeast side of the island, Yello’s growl echoed through the trees. He bared his teeth and tried to dissuade her, but Arin’s determination didn’t waver. Yello sighed deeply.
A few hours ago, when Arin was suiting up, he hadn’t thought much of it. But he never imagined she’d actually set foot in troll territory.
“She’s walking straight to her death,” he thought—but the look in her eyes sparkled with determination to survive.
Yello remembered the troll chieftain—a being who could conjure fire, lightning, and water using a strange, gem-encrusted staff. He couldn’t understand why Arin was acting so fearlessly against such a dangerous opponent.
His anger turned into clumsy, exaggerated movements. Unlike Arin, who moved cautiously, Yello’s footsteps pounded loudly on the dirt with his soft, pudgy paws.
“Yello, shh. They’ll hear us.”
“……”
Yello pouted like a human.
“Don’t worry. We’re just going to sneak in and steal the magic crystal the troll chieftain has.”
Although Yello’s intelligence had improved, he still couldn’t fully understand human speech. He could only guess her plan from her cautious behavior.
And his guess was 100% correct.
“Grrr. (You idiot, this plan is doomed from the start.)”
Yello stomped his feet again, dismayed by how clueless she was.
“What’s your problem, huh?”
“Grrr! (I told you it’s already over!)”
Arin underestimated the troll chieftain because she didn’t know how powerful he was. But Yello knew better.
The moment they entered troll territory, they were as good as captured. Somehow, the troll chieftain always sensed intruders immediately—it was almost magical.
Though she was nervous due to Yello’s resistance, Arin forced herself to stay positive. This was the only way to stay alive, especially with Deneb after her.
As soon as her backpack finished its reset a few hours ago, she had used all her buff items to protect herself: a MacGyver knife that enhanced her cutting skills, jerky to act as bait, and sneakers that masked her presence. With those tools, she believed her plan had a high chance of success.
Though their thoughts differed, neither stopped moving. Arin and Yello steadily approached the troll village.
The moon was hidden by clouds, and an owl’s cry echoed eerily.
Yello caught a scent. He tensed his muscles, ready for a fight, his expression hardening. Sensing his alertness, Arin scanned their surroundings too. About 100 meters ahead, several trolls were patrolling with wooden clubs.
To her, it looked like an organized patrol. Arin quickly hid behind dense bushes, surprised by how such massive monsters moved so systematically. She swallowed nervously and silently hoped her sneakers would work their magic.
But while Arin remained unaware, Yello’s attention wasn’t on the trolls.
The scent he caught wasn’t from them—it was something far more savage and intense. It made him wonder how he hadn’t smelled it sooner.
And its owner was—
“You’ve been found.”
—none other than the Overlord.
Standing behind Arin, Deneb opened his mouth to shout a warning, but no sound came out. A gust of wind escaped instead, swept away by Deneb’s powerful magic.
Deneb’s long, straight finger moved gracefully.
“Shh.”
He pressed that finger against his lips, signaling for silence.
Yello realized neither Arin nor the trolls had sensed Deneb’s mana or presence. Powerless, Yello had no choice but to submit.
Dark mana flowed from Deneb’s body, wrapping around Arin. The magic was so pure and dense, it felt sticky to the touch.
“She’s going to die… like a fool,” Yello thought, his eyes glistening with unshed tears.
But contrary to his fear, the mana enveloping Arin wasn’t lethal—it was absorbed into her body. It was a shield and stealth spell, not an attack.
Yello darted his eyes in confusion. One minute Deneb was trying to kill her, and now he was protecting her? He couldn’t understand it.
Deneb sighed as he cast another spell on Yello.
“Invading troll territory like this… So naive.”
The same stealth and shield magic wrapped around Yello’s body.
Using back-to-back spells made Deneb’s mana circle throb painfully. He winced. The pain had been getting worse lately.
Just earlier, his own sudden pain had nearly disrupted his stealth magic, which was why Yello had sensed him. If not for that, Deneb wouldn’t have been discovered at all. Since he had been following them since morning, his assumption wasn’t wrong.
Now that he’d been exposed, Deneb decided to save his mana and stopped hiding from Yello.
Even a high-grade weapon is useless in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know how to use “stealth.”
Following their leader’s orders, the trolls had discovered traces of Arin several times—ones she couldn’t erase with her buff items. Each time, Deneb calmly erased the evidence.
He suppressed kicked-up dust with wind magic, removed handprints and broken branches, and even erased Yello’s massive presence entirely.
After a couple of hours passed without incident, Arin mistakenly believed all was going well because of her own skill. Relief and a bit of confidence crept onto her face.
“You stand out too much… I’ll go alone from here.”
Yello, noticing Deneb still quietly standing beside her, sensibly climbed up into a tree.
A determined expression paired with awkward movements, Arin moved toward the center of the village like a paper puppet.
Deneb, growing increasingly exhausted, was now more mentally strained than magically. He finally understood—her survival on this monster-infested island was due entirely to luck.
“I can’t leave her alone anymore.”
That thought flickered across his mind, tinged with a possessiveness even Deneb didn’t recognize.
“If I hadn’t made that mistake yesterday, I’d already have stopped her from going anywhere…”
He frowned, recalling what had happened.
After introducing himself casually, he had noticed her behavior become awkward. During life on the island, Deneb had set aside much of his noble pride. But for Arin—who was still new to being stranded—the name “Altair” seemed burdensome.
Altair was the name of the duke’s family from Procyon, the strongest empire on the Cosmos continent. Of course it was intimidating. But Deneb never imagined she was a dimension traveler.
He had genuinely tried to befriend her—hunting chickens and deer to win her favor.
But everything unraveled last night. Realizing her alchemy (i.e., her system) could heal him, he had momentarily lost control of his mana.
The resulting attack had not been intentional. But by the time he reined in the rampaging mana, she had vanished.
She dared to run away.
He knew it was because of the attack—but reason and emotion were two different things.
After stewing all night, he found her near the troll territory. Not knowing what she was planning, he used stealth magic to secretly follow her. After all, Deneb needed her abilities to heal his mana circle and escape the island.
Arin had run to protect her system bag and her life. But Deneb had never thought of stealing her power in the first place. He believed her ability was alchemy—a craft that only functioned with its practitioner alive.
So he never intended to kill her. Even now, Deneb was just waiting for the right moment to win back her trust.
“If she wants something… I’ll just give it to her.”
His sinister whisper dissipated quietly into the air, never reaching Arin.